February 18, 2026. Today, Dr. Dori Tunstall joins PRINT with a monthly dispatch that pairs 100 words and one image—an invitation to pause, reflect, and reimagine design’s role in cultural life. An award-winning design anthropologist and author of Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook (MIT Press, 2023), Dori brings a practice rooted in cultural justice and liberatory joy. Through her coaching and consulting, she helps organizations build more equitable relationships with the communities they serve. Her writing has also appeared on Substack, Fast Company, and The Architect’s Newspaper.
Black History Month and Attempted Erasure
Dori Tunstall cosplaying in her (left) great grandmother’s fur stole and church hat with her aunt’s glasses and her (right) grandmother’s face. Image credit: Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall
How to stop attempted erasure? As a child born in 1972, I experienced Black History Month as posters of facts about people who demonstrated Black Excellence, like Madam C.J. Walker. Now in my 50s, I celebrate the month by cosplaying my ancestors’ defiance. My identities as a Black, neurodiverse, cis-woman are Federally forbidden words. Thus, I cosplay my great grandmother’s hard elegance. Only she could be decked out in furs with her switchblade knife tucked between her large breasts. I cosplay my grandmother’s beautiful face, which I now wear being the same age of when she died. We defy erasure.
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